Through The Looking Glasses

Travis Elborough

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Hardback

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English

Little Brown
26 October 2021

History of fashion; Fashion & society; Mathematics & Sciences

'Elegant and multi-focal. Glorious!' Simon Garfield

The humble pair of glasses might just be one the world's greatest inventions, allowing millions to see a world that might otherwise appear a blur. And yet how much do many of us even really think about these things perched on the ends of our noses?

In this eye-opening history Travis Elborough traces the fascinating true story of spectacles: from their inception as primitive visual aids to monkish scribes right through to today's designer eyewear and the augmented reality of Google Glass. And taking in along the way such delights as lorgnettes, monocles, pince-nez, tortoise-shell 'Windsors' and Ray Ban aviator shades.

Peering into early theories about how the eye worked, he considers the theological and philosophical arguments about the limits of perception by Greek thinkers, Roman statesmen and Arab scholars. There are encounters with ingenious medieval Italian glassmakers, myopic Renaissance rulers and spectacle-makers and opticians, brilliant, mad, bad and dangerous to know, in the Londons of Samuel Pepys, Dr Johnson and Sherlock Holmes.

We learn how eyeglasses were the making of the silent movie star Harold Lloyd and the rock n roller Buddy Holly and helped liberate an exasperated John Lennon from Beatlemania. Get hip to horn-rims with Dizzy Gillespie and Michael Caine

And see girls in glasses through the lenses of the crime fiction by Dorothy L Sayers and Raymond Chandler and the full-screen figure of Marilyn Monroe.

Through the Looking Glasses is about vision and the need for humanity to see clearly, and where the impulse to improve our eyesight has led us. The society of the spectacle may finally be upon us . . . but how much of it do we really see?

By: Travis Elborough
Imprint: Little Brown
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 220mm, Width: 140mm, Spine: 34mm
Weight: 457g
ISBN: 9781408712849
ISBN 10: 1408712849
Pages: 352
Publication Date: 26 October 2021
Audience: General/trade , College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , ELT Advanced , Primary
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Acclaimed by the Guardian as 'one of the country's finest pop culture historians', Travis Elborough has been a freelance writer, author, broadcaster and cultural commentator for nearly two decades. Elborough's books include Wish You Were Here: England on Sea, The Long-Player Goodbye, a hymn to vinyl records that inspired the BBC4 documentary When Albums Ruled the World, in which he also appeared, and A Walk in the Park, a loving exploration of public parks and green space. Elborough regularly appears on Radio 4 and recently wrote and presented the five-part series, The Rise and Fall of the Antique, and is a frequent contributor to the Guardian and Observer, among other newspapers and magazines.

Reviews for Through The Looking Glasses

Elegantly framed and multi-focal, this is a gloriously panoptical survey. As a history of restored sight it is instructive, and as a narrative of facial furniture it is fascinating -- Simon Garfield This is a thorough, entertaining and thoroughly entertaining history of life through a lens. -- David Quantick